re: Weapon Enchants for Mages (or other casters too)

Currently I've been in debate about the enchants of Black Magic vs 63 Spellpower to 1 handed weapons. Here's how I look at it.

63 Spellpower. Static. Constantly hitting with that additional 63 SP.

Black Magic: A proc rate of roughly 35%, increases Haste by 250 for 10 seconds, and has an internal cooldown of 35 seconds.

Honestly I do not know which is best to go with for one handed. Personally, (as much as I love haste) I'd have to go with the 63 static spellpower. Some may disagree, but I have my sound reasons so hear me out.

1. The proc rate. When it boils down, 35% chance is really not a whole hell of a lot. So lets take a boss fight that is 5 minutes long.

First minute goes by and you havent had a proc. Neet.

Second minute goes by and you have a proc. HOLY SHIT 250 HASTE FOR 10 SECONDS WOOO. Ok now you're stuck until hopefully 3 min and 45
seconds into the fight, meaning that basically your 3rd minute is gone.

Third minute no proc.

Fourth minute no proc.

Fifth minute. Dead boss.

Now of course the chance of procs can be different as it is still 35% chance but it still wastes an entire minute. So in essence you get maybe in a 5 minute span a total of 500 additional haste for a total of 20 seconds, which being as how Wrath fights are, doesn't mean jack shit to mages as we have to move so god damn much. Which means to me. A waste of goddamn enchants.

The 63 Spellpower is self explanatory. You have 63 more spellpower.

You can do whichever you prefer, but honestly I'd go with the 63 Spellpower.

What if I have a staff?

Then you go with the uber leet 81 Spellpower in my opinion. Though like the one hander, Black Magic is an option. I personally still think that static Spellpower is the way to go.

I'm no skilled mechanic of this game, I just use common sense. Lets say you have 1200 haste, you proc with blackmagic....you're over haste capped probably as the haste cap is roughly 50% haste. And if you got a Shaman dropping Wrath of Air totem, that's already 5% OVERHASTE IS BAD LIKE OVER HIT. It just becomes a waste of stats that could be used with spellpower or even crit.

re: Weapon Enchants for Mages (or other casters too)

Actually, I'm pretty stoked that you put this up cause I've been wondering the same thing. I've seen some mages running around with the Black Magic enchant and wondered what the dealio was on that. I almost switched over to it too but thanks to Mati, I think I'll stick with a constant rather than a "sort of, once in a while, might proc" enchant.

re: Weapon Enchants for Mages (or other casters too)

Yeah I've been pondering this for a while now, and like I said, even though I'm pretty much a hasteaholic, I went with the constant. Arcane Brilliance on WoW Insider will argue that Black Magic is the way to go no matter what, but again, it is all personal preference.

Also looking at the gear and everything for our class, we get a hell of a lot of haste anyways. With just T9 gear and a trinket or 2 we are at pretty much 800 haste. Which percentage wise is roughly 25% out of the 50% cap. Throw in a Shammy and we are already at 30/50%. Add in a Bloodlust changing that shoots us up another 30% for 30 seconds, meaning we are at 60/50% with a Wrath of Air totem, or 55/50% without.

All this ends up doing is not making your spells go faster anytime after 50%, but slightly reduces the Global Cooldown. Everything stops at 1 second cast. So really anything beyond 50% seems to me to be a waste, because anything after that is going to be a lagfest.

Summary of what others stayed and is correct.
GCD in casters only can be lowered from 1.5sec to 1sec
GCD in melee skills is always 1.5sec, U can't lower that with haste.

Basically what that means is if you got a 1.5 cast spell....it's cap is 33% and if you have a 3 second spell, in order for it's Global Cooldown to be 1 second you need 66% haste. And since most of our spells are not 3 seconds but more around 2 seconds, 50% is the logical number to go for.

re: Weapon Enchants for Mages (or other casters too)

I actually read a post about this on elitest jerks and they basically said that the SP and BM enchants were fairly even. More of a personal preference really. I personally dont love my haste going up and down because I sort of get in a rhythm with my spellcasting and can pretty much be dead on with my next spell without looking at cooldowns. They also said that for 2H the 81 SP enchant is much better.